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Worm – Waterworks
is a Worm fanfic by SeerKing where Taylor triggered with Making a Splash powers and water-based Tinker powers. Armed with these abilities, she now intends to help clean up Brockton Bay of its criminals and help the city in recovering itself.
Worm – Waterworks provides examples of:
- Absence of Evidence:
- The lack of scavenging from local junkyards and the like for parts to Tinker with leads both the PRT and Coil to believe that Riptide has somehow gotten backing from another group or individual.
- After rescuing Dinah, Taylor notes that there's oddly no mention of her when the kidnapping hits the news. She guesses that her involvement means that the PRT is sitting on the story.
- Adaptational Sexuality:
- In canon Taylor is straight, here she will eventually wind up in a relationship with Amy and Lisa.
- In canon Lisa/Tattletale would be straight if not for her power-induced asexuality, while here she would be bisexual.
- Bigger on the Inside: Taylor can create "Magic Bottles" that hold far more liquid than their physical dimensions would suggest, like a bullet-sized object containing a full barrel's worth.
- Blessed with Suck: Capes with powers too similar to the ones possessed by the Endbringers, like Taylor and her Making a Splash powers, tend to fall under this due to the stigma they face. It's part of why she pretends to just be a water-based Tinker.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: One of the cops that Taylor meets on her first capture of some ABB goons is surprisingly brilliant, explaining to his younger partner why Riptide is unlikely to join the Wards/Protectorate, explains the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics stuff that the PRT pulls to try and get young parahumans into the Wards, and finds judging people simply because of the powers they have, like comparing heroic biokinetics to Nilbog, idiotic, but has never applied for detective because he doesn't want to deal with office politics and the like.
- Combo Platter Powers: Taylor has Making a Splash powers in addition to a Tinker power that specializes in water-based tech, with the potential to get the occasional non-water-based bit of tech.
- Crazy-Prepared: The getaway plan for the bank robbery was designed by Lisa to account for any scenario that she could think of, even the worst-case result of all the Wards and Glory Girl showing up. She even forced down her Thinker power as best she could so she could get an objective look at it.
- Taylor has a very impressive set of preparations in the case of someone deciding to attack at her home, Unwritten Rules be damned. Given that Coil breaks the Rules near-constantly...
- Double Standard: The PRT is significantly harder on things like property damage from Rogues than affiliates or members like New Wave, Lisa noting an incident where a Rogue was arrested for minor property damage in a battle with the Teeth, while Glory Girl rarely ever gets more than a scolding for all the damage she causes.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- Kaiser is a nasty customer, but even he knows that Triggers are serious things and would never make light of them, and thinks that the fact that the PRT agent who investigated Rachel/Bitch's trigger is currently dying of cancer is fitting karma for him messing it up so badly.
- Coil hates nepotism or favoritism of any kind, believing that positions should only be filled by those capable of performing their duties competently. Him making sure that the incompetent PRT trooper who screwed up and let the Undersiders escape while blaming the Wards despite them doing everything by the book is punished is only partially out of a desire to get payback for his plans being screwed up.
- Fantastic Racism:
- It's noted that Dinah's mother has a strong aversion to capes after a close friend of hers was killed in the crossfire of a hero/villain fight while she was in college.
- Despite the fact that they hadn't shown any signs of being hostile, two of the guards at City Hall try to attack Taylor and Dinah simply because they're capes, even admitting as such when Taylor asks what law they've broken.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Taylor, due to being a Tinker specializing in water-based tech, as well as the ability to produce a design for non-water-based tech with every certain number of the former.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Coil, after capturing Dinah, dropped his "safe" timeline where he hadn't ordered the attack. This prevents him from taking a second try at catching her unawares when Riptide intervenes.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: Taylor decides to pretend to be solely a water-based Tinker, in part to hide her actual hydrokinesis power and partly to avoid the stigma that capes with powers too similar to the Endbringers face. This will probably turn out to her benefit, given that Coil's cell for her is designed only around keeping her from Tinkering to get out, not Shaker powers.
- I Die Free: In an alternate Coil timeline, Lisa slashed her own wrists rather than become a slave via the drugs Coil is preparing for Dinah.
- Ignored Expert: Coil, thinking that it was just Lisa being delaying and uncooperative as usual, disregarded her warnings about Riptide's patrol patterns, which is why Taylor was able to interfere with his grabbing Dinah at all.
- Lethal Chef: Danny is rather hopeless in the kitchen beyond frying things on the stove, to the point where he once nearly burned the house down by putting a potato wrapped with tinfoil in the microwave, and the fact that they kept a fire extinguisher in the kitchen precisely because of previous attempts at "cooking" speaks to his track record.
- Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: The PRT deliberately does this to the survival rate of Independents, including things like moving to another city and the like, and not accounting for the fact that Independents that do last for a year or so tend to last for quite a while after that, in order to scare the parents of parahuman teens into being more likely to consider the Wards.
- Mad Scientist: Taylor compares her power to one, noting that it seems almost alive, namely when it only gives her non-water-based technology when she fulfills some kind of requirement, like encouraging her to build a BFG for the Nevermore before getting it moving again.
- Making a Splash: Taylor has hydrokinesis and a Tinker power specializing in water-based technology.
- Missing White Woman Syndrome: Taylor notes that the kidnapping of Dinah makes the news, while the hundreds of women kidnapped every year at Brockton Bay by the gangs barely make a blip in the news' radar.
- Named by the Adaptation:
- Marquis' full name is Anton Lavere.
- In canon Dinah Alcott's parents were unnamed, here their names are Diana and Arthur Alcott.
- Iron Rain's full name is Mary Anders.
- Polyamory: The description outright says that Lisa x Taylor x Amy is going to happen eventually.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Kaiser, who makes it clear that if Taylor's cape identity Riptide hadn't stopped Hookwolf from attacking Vista, and he had gotten a kill order as a result, the Empire would have had to cut all ties with Hookwolf to save themselves and warns him not to try again. Then he also tells him to try and capture Riptide to forcibly recruit them.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Averted. Taylor does plan on eventually using her Tinkertech to better the Bay beyond just taking down criminals, she's just building up her support base first so that she can be prepared in case the Simurgh and/or Mannequin/the Nine come into town after her like often happens to those who try to better the world.
- Scare 'Em Straight: The PRT does the above Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics example to get parahumans more likely to join the Wards, mainly through their parents.
- Second Super-Identity: Taylor deliberately starts to set up multiple Tinker Rogue identities, as part of her "Waterworks" organization cover.
- Plumber: specializes in plumbing, pipework, and liquid-based machinery.
- Sailor: specializes in aquatic vehicles and transportation.
- Hydroponics: specializes in irrigation, filtration, and water management systems.
- Semantic Superpower: Taylor's water-based Tinkering encompasses anything involving hydrogen or oxygen, since those are the two elements that make up water.
- Spanner in the Works: Coil is forced to discard the idea of attacking the Ruby Dreams because a random electrical short caused the manager to ask Lung for permission to give the building a much-needed overhaul, and Lung agreed, and the Travelers' planned debut has to be put off due to Noelle acting up.
- Later, unbeknownst to Coil, his plan to have the Undersiders captured by the Wards as a distraction for his abduction of Dinah fails because Riptide shows up and defeats Coil's mercenaries while they are taking Dinah.
- Superpower Lottery: Taylor got a versatile Tinker power focused on water with the potential for the occasional bit of outlier tech and Making a Splash Shaker powers.
- Although getting Making a Splash powers counts as Blessed with Suck due to comparisons to Leviathan, Dodge notes that of all two-hundred or so that have triggered since Scion showed up, Riptide is the only one who is both a Blaster and Shaker, and the sheer strength and scope of her powers means that the Endbringer's Macrohydrokinesis means that it's the only one who can outclass her (regular hydrokinetics being compared to Chihuahuas, Riptide to a Great Dane, and Leviathan to a Hell Hound). Ripple 2.5 reveals that, unlike most Tinkers that deal with chemicals and formulae, she can develop improvements over time to them instead of just being stuck with the formulae her power deigns to give her.
- Title Drop: Initially, Taylor goes by "Waterworks" as her Hero code name, but later uses it as a front for a team formed by several identities, keeping people from learning about her true powers.
- You Didn't Ask: When Lisa realizes via her power that Coil either doesn't care if they get caught or is hoping for it, she's glad that he never asked for details on their getaway plan, or he would have sabotaged it for a bigger distraction.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Coil plans to have the Undersiders captured by the Wards at the bank as a distraction for capturing Dinah. Lisa also suspects that if he does need them again, he can just break them out, and thus drive them further into his influence in the process. Luckily for them, Lisa manages to work out a successful escape plan.
